Old Dogs
by JAK Kinase
Summary: Snapshots of an adventure.


Disclaimer: Not mine, owned by Blizzard, yadda yadda.

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i.

The mercenary is young. Ridiculously young.

The Priest of Rathma tells her so because he figures _somebody_ should be pointing this out and despite _their _mistrust and the insanity surrounding them he's not about to lead a child into battle.

But what breaks his heart is that earnest- ever so earnest- 'I'm fifteen!'

He knows she's lying.

ii.

She refuses to go back. He walks off and it's not before she politely greets her superior by Blood Moor that he realizes she's followed him.

He tells her to go back _again_ but she cheekily tells him that he'd have to accompany her back to the camp because it's such a big bad world out there and it's only after he's started backwards that she realizes he's serious and because she's insane she rushes _towards_ Blood Moor and this time he's forced to follow her.

iii.

The wound's bad. He knows this, intellectually at least. His body hasn't quite caught up yet and he wonders if this is because of the poison or if death spares the messy realities of pain but then it hits and it's taking all of his considerable concentration not to faint.

And he's on her back and she's rushing towards the closest Gate and this is far more humiliating than anything else he's ever experienced. Somewhere beyond the pain and the gut-clenching 'ow' that happens every time the meat that should be inside his abdomen leak a little more out he's really happy that this is _none of this is his fault._

iv.

Somehow he still ends up buying her contract anyways. He feels somewhat obliged even though the whole 'she-saved-my-life' anecdote would forever-always be accompanied with an obligatory 'after-she-put-it-in-danger-in-the-first-place'.

v.

She's going to get them killed. She really is.

And it's not just the fact that the first time he summoned a skeleton in her presence, she screamed like a banshee and he was forced to abandon the energies fuelling his creation before it murdered her in self-defence.

No, rather, it's the fact that she somehow thinks that it's a _good_ idea to be magicking arrows so that they stand out like a candle in the dark in the middle of a land so flat it has its own special categorization.

He tries to pick her brain and get her to say 'Plains' in between the running around the hordes of fallen, corrupted rogues and giant furry creatures he's sure he's seen in textbooks before but can't remember because there are armies surrounding them and he's good but not that good and _she's going to get them killed if she fires another bloody fire arrow_.

In the end he gives in and tells her the answer and they compromise and she magics ice onto her projectile weaponry and he acts more like a necromancer and shuts up.

vi.

The first time he takes a hit that's meant for her the bones weaving around him merely shrug it off and he gets to enjoy the look of priceless horror that is a Priestess of the Sightless Eye realizing she's been saved by a Priest of Rathma before he barks out another order and she's happily killing things so as to avoid dwelling on that thought any more than she has to.

vii.

Cain is definitely making him reassess the general maxim positing the survival of the fittest. Because if Cain is the best that the Horadrim had to offer…

Oh no, wait. The world is going to pot.

Whatdyaknow.

As he boots the old codger through the portal, she asks him if he has to be so mean and he tells her that he has high hopes that the world she gets to grow up in (because, for some reason, his brain decided that she's a real person and not just a moving bag of flesh and bone) is better than the one the old fart left him with.

viii.

When he gets his wand imbued by the horadric mallus its power shoots up immeasurably. Suddenly, the breadth and depth of his knowledge regarding golems multiplies tenfold.

But even Charsi's a little off-put by the sight of a necromancer wielding a wand that shoots pink sparks every time he conjures another golem and his bloody mercenary's laughing so hard he's fairly certain that she's not thirteen years old, she's two.

ix.

The first time she takes the hit for him, he spends one very sleepless night force-feeding her tonics, antidotes and anything else that looks like it'll bring the dead back to life because she took a hit from The Maiden of _Pain_ and the wound is-

(_Andariel. She took a hit from Andariel. The little idi-_)

not looking good and-

"By Rathma if you _ever_ do that again young lady, I'll bring you _back_ from the dead so I can kill you again."

But she still smiles that earnest smile and he realizes that she doesn't believe him.

Maybe that's why she closes her eyes again.

x.

He tells himself he won't forget her.

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Author's Notes: This has been lying around on my computer _forever_. There's a much longer, much grimmer, much more boring version also lying about but it's incomplete so here you go.


End file.
